President Barack Obama's top intelligence official sent a memo to his staff
saying "high value information" was obtained during interrogations
using controversial techniques.

Barack Obama has ordered the creation of a new White House unit for interrogating terror suspectsPhoto: GETTY

By Toby Harnden in Washington

5:51PM BST 22 Apr 2009

The document from Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, was issued last week on the same day as the White House released secret Bush administration legal memos authorising the use of methods that Mr Obama has described as torture.

But a condensed version provided to the press omitted the detail about the value of the information – a move that has incensed Mr Obama's critics and opened him up to accusations of manipulation for political purposes.

Adml Blair's original note to his staff last Thursday said "high value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organisation that was attacking this country".

The memo is an embarrassment for Mr Obama because the conclusion reached by Adml Blair, who oversees the CIA and 15 other US intelligence agencies or departments, undermines a central plank of the White House argument – that the harsh techniques did not work.

Four memos, running to 126 pages, written by officials in Mr Bush's Justice Department contained explicit details of the CIA's methods of extracting information from al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2005.

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They revealed that emerged that the highly controversial technique of "waterboarding", a type of simulated drowning, had been used 266 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, two senior al-Qaeda prisoners.

After initially indicating he opposed any prosecutions, on Tuesday he said he was open to congressional investigations of Bush administration officials and possible criminal charges.

Also deleted from the condensed version of Adml Blair's memo was a statement in which he sympathised with his predecessors who approved the harsh tactics following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given," Adml Blair wrote.

In a statement issued after his full memo was leaked, Adml Blair said: "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.

"The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has called for the release of memos which he says demonstrate the effectiveness of the harsh techniques.

Former Bush administration officials have highlighted that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was water-boarded 183 times in a month, revealed a plot to crash a hijacked aircraft into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the tallest building on the West Coast of the US.